Congratulations.

Book as soon as you can, try to be flexible with your dates, expect to waitlist, and be prepared to spring for standard awards if it comes to that.

Other than that, I'd only suggest you try to route thru SFO: UA recently announced 3 extra weekly frequencies from SFO (Dec to April, IIRC), meaning that an amount of fresh award inventory may be available.

Good luck (and welcome back to FT).